Morning Briefing: Western Copper and Gold Publish Feasibility Study for Casino

Welcome to Mining Stock Daily. I’m Trevor Hall. 

Today is Tuesday, June 28th.

A familiar pattern in gold trading reared its ugly head on Monday, as the gold price rose steadily during the Asian physical buying hours, hitting an overnight high of $1843. Then, abruptly the price took a steep slide right after the a.m. London price fix, falling as low as $1822 before settling at $1823. The Mining Stock Journal said that it will be easier for the price management team to push the gold price down in the paper market as this week will be low volume ahead of the July 4th holiday weekend. Silver followed the same pattern as gold overnight, trading as high as $21.57 during Asian trading hours before getting pummeled down to $21.15 during LBMA and Comex paper trading hours. Thursday is 1st notice day for July silver, which means delivery notices can start going out Wednesday evening to anyone with a long position after the Wednesday Globex session settlement. The Mining Stock Journal said that as of Monday morning there were 30 million more ounces of outstanding July contracts than there are in the registered Comex vault category. Expect an aggressive effort by the banks to induce the sale of July paper silver in order to reduce the potential liability exposure. The mining stocks closed marginally lower Monday after spending much of the day in positive territory. The Mining Stock Journal noted that the mining stocks outperformed the metal Monday, which could be a positive signal for the sector.

We will get to the news from the miners and explorers in a moment, but first a word about today’s sponsor.

This episode of Mining Stock Daily is brought to you by…Rio2. 

Rio2 is advancing the Fenix Gold Project in Chile, the largest undeveloped gold heap leach project in the Americas. Fenix consists of 5 million ounces in the measured and indicated resource category and 1.4 million ounces in the inferred resource category. With a robust PFS in place, Fenix is set up for fast-tracked construction and production. You can find a list of project and company information on their website, rio2.com.

And here’s what you need to know this morning….

Western Copper and Gold published their results of a full feasibility study for its casino copper-gold-molybdenum deposit in Yukon. The technical report considers being constructed as an open pit mine, with a concentrator processing 120,000 tonnes per day (t/d) to recover copper, gold, molybdenum and silver, as well as a 25,000 t/d oxide heap leach facility to recover gold, silver and copper. The study shows casino hosting a pre-tax NPV of $3.47B with an IRR of 21.2%. Initial capex is slated for $3.62B. The Study in general took the design from the 2021 Preliminary Economic Assessment ("PEA") and brought the engineering to a Feasibility Study level; however, there are some notable changes from the PEA, including improved gold recovery from the heap leach, small changes to the grades in tonnage treated through the mill, and also taking into account inflation since the PEA was published last year.  Items of particular note were diesel price, which saw a price increase of 40.3%, and steel, reflected by a price increase in grinding media of 33.2%. Western Copper and Gold trades on the TSX and the NYSE with WRN. News Release

Seabridge Gold published its preliminary feasibility study for its KSM project in British Columbia. The company says this PFS shows a considerably more sustainable and profitable mining operation than its 2016 predecessor, now consisting of an all open pit mine plan that includes the Mitchell, East Mitchell and Sulphurets deposits only. The primary reasons for the improvements in the plan arise from the acquisition of the East Mitchell open pit resource and an expansion to planned mill throughput. The many design improvements over the 2016 PFS include a smaller environmental footprint, reduced waste rock production, reduced green house gas emissions by electrification of the mine haul fleet, a 50% increase in mill throughput, and the elimination of capital-intensive block cave mining. This new study highlights an after tax NPV increase from US$1.5 billion to US$7.9 billion and an IRR increase from 8.0% to 16.1%. A 20 year reduction in mine life from 53 Years to 33 years due to the increased mill throughput supplied by higher open pit production. Total capital of US$10.5 billion is reduced to $US9.6 billion with increases from inflation and mill expansion being wholly offset by the elimination of block cave mining from the PFS plan. Seabrdidge Gold trades on the TSX with SEA and on the NYSE with SA. News Release

Royal Road Minerals provided results from three diamond drill holes at its Guintär copper-gold exploration project and initial drill results from the immediately contiguous El Aleman option agreement area, in Antioquia Department, Colombia. Drilling at Guintär commenced in July of 2021 and was aimed principally at testing for an underlying intrusive or porphyry-related source to the gold and copper mineralization which had been intersected in previous drilling and is evident in surface geochemical sampling over an area of more than 10 square kilometers. Results reported today included 80.5 meters of 1 gram per tonne gold in a step-out target, which included 18 meters of 3 g/t. The other results included 14 meters of 1.2 g/t gold equivalent and 177 meters of 1 gt gold equivalent. The Guintär project is part of the Guintär-Niverengo and Margaritas project which is a 50-50 joint venture between Royal Road and Mineros. Road Road trades on the TSXV with RYR. News Release

Meridian Mining provided an exploration update for its 11km long Cabaçal Mine Corridor. Results from recently completed IP surveys have extended the prospectivity of the C4-A gold-silver discovery1 along strike to the southeast linking up with further gold-in-soil anomalies. The Company is also announcing that recent geophysical surveys from the VMS copper target at C2-A East2, have defined strong basement EM and IP anomalies, creating a new priority target for future drilling. Three surface drill rigs and four drill crews are currently confirming, infilling, and expanding the extensive near-surface copper-gold mineralization of the Cabaçal Mine. Meridian Mining trades on the TSX with MNO. News Release

Lahontan Gold shared drill results from two reverse-circulation drill holes on the Santa Fe pit area of the companies Santa Fe project in Nevada’s Walker Lane. These drill holes targeted northwest and down-dip step outs from known gold and silver mineralization along the Santa Fe fault. Highlights include the highest-grade Au assays in project history: 4.6m grading 112.3 gt Au. This was within the broader hit of 25.9m of 20.36 gt. The company also reported 35.1 m of 1.07 gt gold in the other result. Lahontan Gold trades on the TSXV with LG. News Release

AbraSilver says they have made a new discovery of a copper-gold-molybdenum porphyry system at its La Coipita project in Argentina. The Company’s maiden drill campaign at La Coipita consisted of two initial deep holes to test the target. Hole 2 intersected a continuous copper-gold porphyry zone of 226m grading 0.43% CuEq. Mineralisation remains open at depth, as the hole ended within a separate interval of 146m of 0.30% CuEq down to a depth of approximately 1,200m. AbraSilver trades on the TSXV with ABRA and on the OTC with ABBRF. News Release

Prospector Metals has completed a Phase 1 exploration program on its Savant Project in Ontario. The program included ground truthing key target areas to be followed up by drilling Q3, 2022. A total of 594 grab samples were collected during the Phase 1 program for which 155 assays have been received to date with highlights of 68.6 g/t gold and 26.5 g/t gold from the Wiggle Creek prospect. The zone extends for at least 10km and is characterized by strongly sheared and altered iron formation and greywacke. Prospector Metals trades on the TSX V with PPP and on the OTCQB with ETHOF. News Release

That concludes today’s morning briefing.

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